Danny L Harle's newly-released second LP, Cerulean, is, he admits, a "low concept album".

Following his super-conceptual first record, 2021's Harlecore, the 36-year-old English composer/producer —a well-known and well-regarded collaborator of Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, yeule, Oklou and Dua Lipa— has returned with an album whose songs are out to chase Harle's favourite musical feeling: "melancholic euphoria."

In conversation with Anthony Carew on The International Pop Underground, Harle talks about his collaborative relationships, his "heartwarming" experience making Cerulean, and his radical compositional approach: to make music he actually likes.

"I did two degrees in classical composition," Harle recounts, "[and] it kind of took both degrees for me to realise [I] absolutely shouldn't think about process whatsoever, in order to make my best music. And that I should be completely led by this feeling that music gives me. And use that as the guiding light."

"Through trial and error," he continues, "I just started making music that I liked to listen to.

"I can remember in a composition lesson at university, people found it offensive, the idea that I liked to listen to music that I have written... But my response to that was: 'if you don't like the music that you're writing, what an insult to make somebody else sit through it!'"

Feature image: Ronan Park